The bed

By: Hermann Zsuzsanna Date: 2025. 04. 04. 10:40

Several times in my life I have realised how lucky I am compared to many, how good my life is and how much I love it… As the saying goes, “two things matter in life, one is the bed you are born into and the other is the bed you go to sleep in”.

This article is available for reading in Trade magazin 2025/4.

We can say that I was born into an enviable retailer family that gave me a stable background, from which I had the opportunity to go anywhere and achieve anything. Yet, no one should think that all these years have been without problems, difficulties and challenges, but I have experienced what it is like to always have help at hand, always have shelter, always have somewhere to go home to and be safe. But not everyone has that! I wonder why?

For quite a few years, as president of the Chain Bridge Foundation, every spring I have been visiting the homes of selected students with members of the board of trustees. I meet the parents and the students applying for funding. We don’t spend much time together, maybe 30-40 minutes, but it is enough to get a sense of how much they need help right there. They were simply born into a bed that can’t provide enough support for achieving more.

The Chain Bridge Foundation was established by the FMCG decision-makers of the Chain Bridge Association, a group of private individuals, to find highly disadvantaged high school graduates who want to continue their studies in the field of business and have the necessary skills, ambition and motivation to do so, but whose financial means and family background don’t allow them to do so.

But the foundation helps! It gives a total of HUF 3m over 10 academic semesters to the best and most needy students, but it is also possible to donate 1-4 semester grants. It all depends on how much money we can raise from companies and individuals from one year to the next, but even some of the income from Trade magazin’s Business Days conference is donated to support at least 1 student for 10 semesters every year – because there are always more students than grants! This fact makes our task even harder, the selection and the knowledge that we can’t help everyone.

So far 33 students have benefited from the foundation’s support and it looks like if all goes well, thanks to our donors a record 7 students will receive some kind of support this September, a record number so far.

(More information: info@lanchidalapitvany.hu)

Best regards,
Zsuzsanna Hermann,
Editor in Chief